


ballast

by snagov



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Eavesdropping, Fix-It, Jealousy, Love Confessions, M/M, Pining, Romance, Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies, talking to your crush? sounds fake
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-15
Updated: 2020-06-15
Packaged: 2021-03-04 02:01:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,344
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24735847
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/snagov/pseuds/snagov
Summary: You shouldn't listen to things not meant for your ears.
Relationships: Captain Francis Crozier/Commander James Fitzjames
Comments: 12
Kudos: 113





	ballast

Books are always known to inspire feeling but James Fitzjames is staring at this one as if it had set fire to his ship and run off with his best silver.

_The Chimes  
_ _by Charles Dickens  
Published 1844  
London, England_

The publisher's information glares up at James from the first page of _The Chimes_. It's innocuous enough, nothing unusual or unexpected. His fingers run along the black text, trying to parse the uneasiness roiling in his gut. He swallows, his stomach feeling like a storm-tossed ship. He cannot understand why. 

He at least knows _why_ he had picked the book up. Wandering aimlessly through the bookshop, left on half-pay and to his own devices, James is still trying to shake off a memory. He’d tried to drop it in the harbor, tie an anchor to it. Still, like everything we try to bury, sooner or later something digs it up. A week ago, James had visited a pub. As he'd stood near the counter, empty pint in hand, waiting and glancing about, some conversation had filtered through.

"Captain Crozier is staying at Eliot Place, isn't he?" A voice had said. James' ears had caught on the name _Crozier_ instantly. 

"Aye, that he is." Another voice had come. "For now, at least. Though I daresay the Rosses won't let him out of the house till there's somewhere happy he might go to."

"It was a hard expedition. What they faced - well, the less said the better. He can't be blamed for a bit of a brown study." 

"Yes. And, well, between you and me, the poor fellow's utterly crushed in love. It's obvious to anyone who spares a sidelong glance. Especially after - " 

"Your lager, sir," the bartender had said then, pushing James' pint toward him. He glanced up, seeking the coins in his pockets and paying the man. The thread of the overheard conversation had been briefly lost. He picked it back up again as he tried to discreetly press closer to the speakers, believing he might have heard the name _James._ He dug his teeth into his lower lip, sipping at the drink. There is a _James_ at Eliot Place, a fact that he is unlikely to forget anytime soon. It's too easy to remember an Admiralty event, gold and glittering, with Francis standing awkward and upright near the wall, one hand held behind his back as if at attention. Too easy to remember copper-haired Sir James Clark Ross with his affable smiles. The wake of his southern success had trailed behind him as he walked toward Francis with two flutes of champagne, teasing a rare smile from the melancholy Irishman. 

That had been before James Fitzjames had ever been introduced to Francis Crozier. Before the North. Before the ice and the shale, before broken teeth and bloody gums. Before two ships had entered Lancaster Sound and never returned. (Before Francis had dipped torn strips of linen into ice melt to clean James’ wounds, to mop the feverish sweat from his brow. Before James had wrapped his too-thin hands around Francis’ wrist, begging him not to leave. Before James had watched a whiskey-soaked Francis pull bottle after bottle out, casting them from himself. _I’m going to be unwell, gentlemen,_ Francis had gutted out, low and wretched. James had watched with solemn dark eyes, his hands aching to reach out. To smooth his hair, to reach for his shoulder. It was only later, after he’d picked the ashes from Carnivale out from his hair, that James had realized he’d fallen in love.) 

There had been rumors then, long before they had sailed from Greenhithe, of the unapproachable fondness Francis had felt for Ross. As he pressed himself into a shadow, it was an uncomfortable reminder that Francis’ heart had already been scribbled upon, claimed and named. 

"It was hard not to notice it, even if you weren't aboard _Terror_ much. Saw the whole thing myself, right from the start. The captain never stopped talking about him, fretting this way and that. He'd write letters and bad poetry, honestly awful, and keep 'em hidden in a hollowed out copy of _The Chimes_." The speaker paused. "He didn't think anyone'd seen it o'course, but I caught a glimpse or two."

"Truly?"

"Swear to it. On my honor.”

“You’ve no honor.”

“Fine,” the voice said with a laugh. “On your honor then.”

The conversation had diverged from there and, after leaving the pub, James had found himself wandering slowly back to his rooms, feeling sick and unsettled and dragging the night alongside him for company. Love is no solitaire, it wasn't meant to be played alone. Yet, his cards were dealt and with no one at the table for company. Alone and in love. He'd dawdled and kicked at stones, picking his way back to his empty bed, and poured himself a brandy to keep warm. If he'd tossed and turned in bed, violently awake until the sun rose, thinking of a broad, ruddy face and pale eyes, then that was only his failing to bear. Francis Crozier. James had once had the comfort to loathe the man. His life had been whole, shaped well with no cracks nor crevasses to filter in. Somehow Francis had permeated his boundaries, slipped through with a sharp glance and quiet grace, till there was a spot only he could fill. 

James is unsteady without him. Cored out.

_I'm an utter fool. Of course it's Ross. I knew that there was something there, the rumors had been sound enough. The shape of what you said of him and did not say. You wrote to him constantly, the entire voyage, I was not blind enough to miss that._

It had been easy to forget once. When the sun had been unrelenting, ceaseless across the shale, and his own blood had tasted like iron in his mouth, James had been able to watch Francis' quiet smile and imagine it was there for him alone. Why is it lovers want to bear pieces back from their loved ones? He feels like a crow. A magpie. He would steal a lock of Francis' hair, a corner of his shadow. He would find the exact shade of the palms of his hands and keep it with him. But it doesn't work like that. Even if he could gather every color, every texture, every scent and sound and taste of Francis, he would still not have the man himself. 

Sleep kept making promises and never came. In the morning, he splashed some cold water on his face and dressed. It felt strange to pull on fine clothing and to set his hair again, after six months in England, all outward signs of scurvy had long-since healed, only a few teeth lost to the wilderness and even those empty spaces were fitted with false ones. Strange how he could fill in the physical damage of himself, erase the past, but do nothing for the hole in his heart. Science hasn’t come so far. Not yet. _Perhaps someday_ , he thought, _that eternal sunshine of the spotless mind. That blameless vestal’s lot._ Someday but not today. He frowned, unable to remember the rest of how the poem had gone. 

Which had drawn him here, standing in a bookshop shortly after ten in the morning, holding Charles Dickens in his still too-skinny hands. He frowns, his dark brows drawing together like conspirators. He tilts his head down, studying the page, trying to understand what precisely has set him off-kilter. Curls brush against his thin cheeks, etched deep with permanent lines. The edition notice is simple enough, giving the cursory details of the publisher's address and date of publication. 

The date. _First publishing: 1844._

Francis had returned from the south with Ross in 1843. James knows this by heart, he'd picked out every fact he could find about the Antarctica expedition, swallowing them up as quickly as he could. 1843. There was no conceivable way that Francis could have had a copy of The Chimes aboard then. He blinks, his pulse ignoring the silent, rational pleas he hisses to himself. _It's something else. There's another explanation. I've misheard. I've misunderstood. Don't think about it, don't say anything. Don't make a fool of yourself._

So naturally, here he is, being shown to the drawing room of Eliot Place, about to make a fool of himself.

"James?" Francis asks, folding his newspaper with a careful crease and standing. "What the Devil brought - Good God, man, what's happened? You're white as a damned ghost. Come, sit down." 

"No," James shakes his head, dark curls brushing his shoulders. "I'm quite all right." His hands do not shake, though his breathing is rapid and he can feel a damning flush creeping up his neck, peeking around his tie and stock. 

"Some water. Let me ring for water."

"Francis." 

"James," Francis says, eyes wide and uneasy. There's a quiet echo in his expression. A fear remembered from a white emptiness somewhere half a world away. He knows the way Francis looks in fear and grief. The pinched set of his face, the tightness around his eyes. The thin smile. 

He swallows again and glances around, seeing that the maid had drawn the door shut behind her. Looking back, Francis still has the same concerned, careworn expression. His clothing fits him loosely, clearly all tailored from before they had left. He wonders if Francis, like himself, finds most food turns his stomach these days. If there’s some part of him unable to disappear back into the life he’d lived before, as if to become whole again would be to forget what they had lived on the ice. How do you come back? How do you return? The world had moved on without them, leaving no nooks or crannies for them to come back to. He feels like scorched earth. 

One step at a time. 

"What would you say if I told you I have a story for you?"

Some of the lines ease on Francis' forehead, a brow raises in faint relief. "Suppose I'd be asking you if it involves Birdshit Island." (Neither of them say anything of the bullet wound in his side, neither speak of Nelson at Trafalgar. The scar is new and still pink; it will be for years.) Humor softens his words.

James gives a wry laugh, shaking his head. "No, though I wish." He pauses, inhaling. "This beastly tale is new, I'm afraid. I've yet to subject anyone to it." 

Francis watches him carefully. The tone in the room is strange, seeming somewhere out of time like a held breath. "Go on."

He walks forward and back, pacing a little, before stopping at the window. The garden is green and lush out past the windows. It's easier to focus on the sparrows and starlings in the oak branches than to turn and face Francis. His mouth opens, closes, opens again. For once in his blasted embroidered life, he doesn't know where to begin. 

"I am a fool, Francis, and I have missed you," he says quietly, watching the birds in their nests and the breeze in the boughs. "I have not stopped thinking of you since our return. Not even in sleep. I should not burden you with this … unnatural feeling, I know. It is only my own weakness that has brought me here. And some remnant of pride that I should admit it." He stops, inhaling. "I imagined I should never tell this to you. Bloody swore it to myself. Indeed, it would be _wiser,_ for the want of your friendship. But, again, I am a fool and it has been three months since your last letter and a blasted four since I've seen you. I would rather confess and have done so I might move on." 

_Please tell me what I overheard was true. Tell me there’s a happy ending after all this._ He closes his eyes. Being silently in love is a strange Purgatory, he is ready to have his heart weighed against a feather. To be judged. 

He had expected some noise, some reaction. An inhale, a gasp, a step, a denial. The only thing James has not prepared himself for is complete silence. He turns slowly, his brow creased. “Francis, I - “

Francis is completely still, his eyes wide. He blinks, biting his lip. His hands are white-knuckled and firmly grip the back of a wingback chair. Unlike James', they do shake. 

"Tell it to me plain." 

A careful hope shelters itself in that Pandora's box of his chest. "I love you. Brutally. Fervently. And I am afraid forever." 

"Christ in Heaven," Francis mutters to the floor, running one hand over his face. 

James nods, a slow dread stealing over him. He licks his lips, trying to pull the shattered bits of his pride over him like a blanket. He's pieced himself together from driftwood before, he can do it again. "Right. I understand - "

Francis shakes his head, moving forward, taking one of James' hands in his own. A kiss is pressed to the back of his hand, directly over the veins and tendons. He can feel the heat in his blood, carried from Francis' kiss to his heart. 

"What do you understand then?" Francis asks, turning his hand over and pressing his mouth to each fingertip. To the soft palm and the rough, rope-worn calluses. To the underside of his wrist. James shivers at the scrape of Francis' stubbled cheek against his skin, dizzying lightness climbing his vertebrae two at a time. 

"Do not tease me." _Don't be so cruel._

"Do you know how I have loved you?" Francis asks. His blue eyes bright as the day around them. 

James breathes in, shaking his head. Francis' fingers weave into his own, the coarse skin of his thumb moving in circles over the tendons of James' hand. When he tilts his head upward, mouth to meet James' own, there is a rush of lightness through him, as if each empty space had been aired out at last to welcome him home.


End file.
